ones. Among the contributors were Pier della Vigna, Giacomo da Lentino, and Fra Guittone. When we come to Dante, we find him attacked bitterly on more than one occasion by Cecco Angiolieri, but in the matter of tenzoni, he is especially associated with Forese Donati. A reader may regard the correspondence between these two men only as examples of the rough, but good-natured, verbal sparring in which friends often indulge. Its resemblance, however, to that of Mir Chakur and Gwaharām is striking.

Striking, too, is the parallel in the case of Petrarch. No man in the fourteenth century seems to have had more friends than he, friends who were almost worshippers. But Petrarch was too human to pose forever on a pedestal before the eyes of his admirers, especially when those eyes, though loyal, were as keen to detect weakness as to appreciate strength. Great, then, was the consternation and wrath of a number of Florentines when their idol stepped down rather heavily from his pedestal and accepted the hospitality of the Visconti. The indignation found expression in loud expostulations, to which Boccaccio contributed. Even now the need is felt of defending Petrarch's action. Among his most recent apologists is Novati, who, speaking of the anger of the poet's contemporaries, says: "Not less sharp, at least in intention, than the satira' of the good Giovanni, must have been the philippics of Zanobi da Strada, Giovanni d'Arezzo, Forese Donati, and Lapo da Castiglionchio. Gano da Colle wrote instead a sonnet to dissuade Petrarch from his sinister decision, and had the poem sung to him in Milan by a jongleur named Malizia." 1

This act of Gano da Colle seems an anachronism. It belongs to Provence of the twelfth century rather than to Italy of the fourteenth, when the relations between the poets and their audiences resembled rather those between the same two classes at the present day. As a matter of fact, in the fourteenth century in Italy, publication was largely oral, and we still have the jongleurpublisher and the poet-troubadour. The best evidence comes from Petrarch himself. In a letter to Boccaccio, he speaks of men who live by words of others, and who have increased greatly in numbers. Sterile themselves, they pester unsuccessful authors, whose poems they recite before kings and nobles, and thus fill their purses.2 To this class of men belonged Malizia, whom Gano called upon to recite his sonnet in the presence of Petrarch.

Petrarch did not reply in a sonnet. In its stead, he wrote a Latin letter which Fracassetti has published.3 "Malicia salutabis Ganum. Eius vulgare carmen responso non egere idem ipse qui scripsit fateretur, si videre omnia

1 F. Novati, "Il Petrarca ed i Visconti," in F. Petrarca e la Lombardia, 1904, p. 26. The article was printed also in the Rivista d'Italia, July, 1904. The same passage, with a slight change in the wording, is on pp. 144-145.

2 Epistolae de rebus senilibus, Book V, letter 3. In the Basle edition of the complete works, 1554, the passage is printed on p. 877.

3 Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variae, III, 515.

penitus posset," etc. He asks Malizia to repeat these words to Gano: "Super his secundum tuam illam praerapidam eloquentiam disputabis ut tibi videtur viva voce, sed non aspera ut solitus es: suaviter, oro te, sine clamore . . . et sine accentibus horrificis, denique non barbarice, quaeso, sed italice." Here, then, is rather an original tenzone-correspondence.1 Gano da Colle reproves Petrarch in the orthodox sonnet form; but, instead of sending the poem by ordinary channels, he has it memorized and repeated before Petrarch's face. It is one thing to receive an insulting written communication and read it in the privacy of your room, composing your countenance before you issue forth; it is quite another to look absolutely indifferent while stinging words of censure are repeated by a skilled dramatic reciter.2 And the smarting sense of injury is increased by the thought that this same messenger will publish broadcast, as well as render to his master an account, probably exaggerated, of your confusion during chastisement.

Petrarch apparently was irritated. His answer to Gano is rather contemptuous, but it is Malizia who has to bear the brunt of his anger. Gano is far away Malizia is present, and has delivered an offensive poem in an offensive manner. He must be punished, and is.

Petrarch is not the only man who has resented being sung at in this fashion. A remarkable parallel is to be found in the exchange of invectives between Mir Chakur and Gwaharām. To the latter's abuse, Mir Chakur replies: "You injure yourself with that enmity. . . . You took flight from the fort of Dab, and drew breath at the mouth of the Mullah, yet I never made such a mock of you, nor sent a bard to taunt you, reciting a song with twanging of strings in front of your noble face." 3

1 It will be noticed that this letter is little more than a Latin translation or adaptation of a vernacular tenzone.

2 Coluccio Salutati, censuring a friend for his lack of patriotism, says, " Vellem me coram videres ut adderetur mordaci epistole etiam vultus asperitas et indignantis signa pudibundus aspiceres." The letter from which this passage is taken is the tenth in Novati's edition of the Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, I, 26, and it is addressed to Ser Andrea di ser Conte. Gano evidently more nearly attained this wish than Coluccio. 8 Dames, pp. 22-23.

SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS AN EXAMPLE OF

ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY

EDWIN A. GREENLAW

By Sidney and his contemporaries, Arcadia was regarded as an heroic poem. Fraunce lists it with the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Æneid; 1 Harington cites it in his defense of the structure of Orlando Furioso; 2 Harvey says that if Homer be not at hand, Arcadia will do as well to supply examples of the perfect hero: "You may read his furious Iliads and cunning Odysses in the brave adventures of Pyrocles and Musidorus, where Pyrocles playeth the doughty fighter like Hector or Achilles, Musidorus the valiant Captaine, like Pandarus or Diomedes; both the famous errant knightes, like Aeneas or Ulysses." "3 And Meres, after a reference to the Cyropaedia as being an absolute heroical poem, this reference, by the way, being lifted bodily from Sidney's Defense, says that Sidney "writ his immortal poem, The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia, in Prose, and yet our rarest Poet." As to Sidney's own conception of heroic poetry, it is sufficient to note his reference to Orlando, Cyrus, and❤ Æneas as types of excellence presented by poets; his theory that it is notriming or versing that maketh a poet; his conception of the Cyropaedia as → giving the "portraiture of a just empire"; his test of a poet by his power of feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful, teaching"; and the eloquent praise of heroic poetry as the highest of "kinds," even as the poet surpasses, in his power to teach, both historian and philosopher.5

4

This conception of Arcadia as being an heroic poem, together with the theories set down by Sidney in his Defense, makes it reasonable to infer that the book was thought to conform to the ideas of the time as to the province of this "kind." The Puritan attack on poetry intensified the view, inherited by the Renaissance from the mediaval period, that the great epics should be. regarded as allegories. But there is a difference between the interpretation of Virgil given, for example, by Alberti in 1468, and the conception held in the time of Tasso and Spenser. The earlier view was still medieval: the Æneid was an allegory of Platonism and Christianity, which were held to be identical. Of the sixteenth-century interpretations, that of Douglas, as

1 Arcadian Rhetorike, 1588.

2 Preface, 1591.

& Pierces Supererogation, 1593.

4 Palladis Tamia, 1598.

5 Defense, ed. Cook, pp. 8, 11, 17, 30, 31.

6 Villari, Machiavelli, I, 128.

might be expected from the author of the Palice of Honour, is still mediæval. Stanyhurst regards Virgil as a profound philosopher, but says nothing of any theological motive.1 But Sidney sees in Æneas the portrait of the "excellent man"; "a virtuous man in all fortunes"; "no philosophers precepts can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil . . . there are many mysteries contained in poetry which were of purpose written darkly."2 Nash inveighs against "the fantasticall dreames of those exiled Abbielubbers" as contained in the metrical romances, but counts poetry a more hidden and divine kinde of Philosophy, enwrapped in blinde Fables and darke stories, wherin the principles of more excellent Arts and morrall precepts of manners, illustrated with divers examples of other Kingdomes and Countries are contained." This theory of allegory is more fully explained by Harington: "The ancient Poets have indeed wrapped as it were in their writings divers and sundry meanings; . . . for the litterall sence (as it were the utmost barke or ryne) they set downe in manner of an historie the acts and notable exploits; then in the same fiction, as a second rine and somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to the pith and marrow, they place the 'Morall sence profitable for the active life of man;`. . . manie times also under the selfesame words they comprehend some true understanding of naturall Philosophie, or sometimes of politike governement, and now and then of divinity: and these same sences that comprehend so excellent knowledge we call the Allegorie, which Plutarch defineth to be when one thing is told, and by that another is understood." In the passages just cited we have a view of allegory quite different from that illustrated by the Romance of the Rose or by Piers Plowman. The whole theory is excellently summed up by Spenser in his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh; in which he says that he has followed "all the antique Poets historicall; first Homere, who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis; then Virgil, whose like intention was to doe in the person of Æneas; after him Ariosto comprised them both in Orlando; and lately Tasso dissevered them againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely that part which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or vertues of a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo; the other named Politice in his Godfredo." Finally, we have, in a single sentence in the Defense, evidence of Sidney's acceptance of the view that an heroic poem may be written in prose, and that it should have allegorical significance: For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently as to give us effigiem

1 Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, II, 137.

2 Sidney, Defense, ed. Cook, pp. 8, 17, 57. Webbe in 1586 expressed exactly the same view (English Poetrie, ed. Arber, p. 28).

3 Anatomie of Absurditie, in Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, I, 323, 328; Works, ed. McKerrow, I, 25 ff.

4 Preface, in Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, II, 201–202.

under the name of Cyrus, . . . made therein an absolute

We now need evidence that Sidney regarded his Arcadia seriously. Ac-▾ cording to the views usually expressed in recent criticism, the book was carelessly written, during a period of enforced retirement from court, for the delectation of the writer's sister; it was a mere toy of which its author was ashamed and which he wished never to be published; it has no serious significance. There are three objections to these views. In the first place, it was a point of honor among gentlemen writers in that age to affect contempt for their literary works; moreover, there may have been reasons why Sidney should have hesitated to print a book capable, in those suspicious times, of direct application. In the second place, the testimony of Fulke Greville is that of an intimate friend; it is too earnest to be disregarded; and it exactly fits the character of Sidney as revealed in his conversations and his correspondence. Greville says that it was Sidney's aim "to turn the barren Philosophy precepts into pregnant Images of life." The story, he says, had a twofold character; on the one hand, it was to represent "the growth, state, and declination of Princes"; on the other, "to limn out such exact pictures that a courtier might know in all ways how to conduct himself toward his Prince as well as in "all other moodes of private fortunes or misfortunes." We are to see," in the scope of these dead images . . . that when Soveraign Princes, to play with their own visions, will put off publique action, which is the splendour of Majestie, and unactively charge the managing of their greatest affaires upon the second-hand faith, and diligence of Deputies, . . . even then they bury themselves, and their Estates in a cloud of contempt, and under it both encourage, and shaddow the conspiracies of ambitious subalternes to their false endes, I mean the ruin of States and Princes." He speaks of 1 Defense, ed. Cook, p. 11.

2 W. Stigant, in Cambridge Essays, 1858, pp. 110 ff., sees contemporary references in the romance, and accepts Fulke Greville's views; but recent opinion is fairly represented by M. Jusserand (English Novel, p. 245), who thinks Greville was exaggerating and that Sidney's main object was not politics, but love. Sir Sidney Lee (Great Englishmen, pp. 99, 100) is more than usually inaccurate, a specimen being his name "Synesia" for Gynecia, and his statement that she is a "lascivious old queen"!

3 Of many illustrations of this point, the passage in Puttenham's (?) Arte of English Poesie will serve : "I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably, and suppressed it agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it: as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman to seeme learned and to shew himselfe amorous of any good Art" (Smith, II, 22). Compare Spenser's dedications for self-depreciation exactly similar to that contained in Sidney's letter to his sister; and note that Sidney speaks of his Defense as an "ink-wasting toy."

+ It will be remembered that the reason for Sidney's retirement was his bold letter to the Queen about the French marriage. That this brought him into great danger is indicated by Languet's letter, October, 1580, from which it is clear that Sidney realized the risk he ran, but wrote the letter because he was ordered to do so, presumably by Leicester (Pears, Correspondence, p. 187).